When he turned his rich brown eyes upon me, I couldn’t help but call the next verse back to him:
“The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb-
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.”
I was immediately taken by his smile, kind and small. Moving along the railing toward me, he opened his mouth as if to ask me a question, then gazed down at the open book in his hands. He didn’t know the poem by heart, as I did, yet he recited the last lines beautifully, not only as a literate man but with passion, his voice rising and falling.
“Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter’s whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.”
When his voice trailed away and was replaced by the churning of the steamer’s boiler, I said, “Of Pushkin’s earliest poems, that is my favorite.”
“Mine too.” He bowed his head to me and said, “They call me Sasha.”
“Maria.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Sankt Peterburg. And you?”
Though he said he was a native of Novgorod, Sasha was actually traveling from Moscow, where he was attending the university. He was on his way to visit a friend in Pokrovskoye, and when I told him that was my home village, his eyes lit up.
“Say,” he began, pensively tugging on his beard, “if you’re coming from the capital and you’re on the way to…to…well, I heard down below that the famous Father Grigori is on board. You wouldn’t happen to be-”
“Yes, I am his eldest.” I felt my cheeks flush warmly. “But like all rumors, the story you heard is not quite true. While my sister and I are on board, my father is not. He’s already at home.”
“Oh, that is my loss, for it has always been a keen desire of mine to meet him.”
I was never eager to speak of my family-in fact, my father encouraged me not to-so I glanced at his book, and asked, “What do you study at the university, literature?”
“Exactly.” Now it was Sasha’s turn to blush as he bolstered his confidence and confessed, “Actually…actually, I’m a writer.”
“Really?”
As it turned out, we were both aspiring poets, only Sasha was rather more advanced, having published not just two poems at the university but one in a national poetry magazine as well. Of course he was smart, that much I could tell by the sweet squint of his eyes, by the way he used his hands, and, naturally, by his passion for the written word.
“What do you love about literature?” I asked.
“It’s so democratic. I know not everyone can read in our country-that will change-but anyone can pick up a book.”
“And what writers have meant the most to you?”
Our discussion took off like a racing troika, surprisingly fast and impetuous. Of our great writers of the last century, we both cherished Pushkin most of all for the way he spoke not to the upper class but to us, the common people. Sasha enjoyed Lermontov for his emphasis on feeling, while I found magic in Gogol’s strange mix of language. As to Dostoyevsky, however, we both found his stories too morose and too filled with sorrow.
“Have you heard of Tsvetayeva? She’s quite young, but I really like her work-she has such passion and intensity,” I said. “Plus I like how she relies on fairy tales and folk music. She will be very famous, I think.”
“Perhaps. What do you think of Anna Akhmatova? You know what she said, don’t you? ‘I am the first to teach women how to speak.’”
The conversation went on and on, our words tripping over one another, and I completely lost track of the time. I’d never been able to talk about these things with any boy, let alone a man, and that Sasha could be so interesting, let alone so interested in what I had to say, was nearly the most exciting thing I’d ever experienced. How could he know so much, how could he anticipate what I was going to say, how could he take my thoughts and expound upon them so easily?
Suddenly, like the crack of a thunderbolt, a grandmotherly voice shouted out my full name: “Matryona Grigorevna Rasputina!”
I jumped like a common thief, even more so when I realized that Sasha was holding my hand. Spinning around, I saw Dunya, huffing and puffing, at the top of the steep stairs.
“You are to come down at once!” she snapped.
“Yes…yes, of course. Just give me a minute. We were talking about poetry, and-”
“Now!”
Right in front of Dunya, Sasha lifted my left hand to his firm soft lips and kissed it. “Will I ever see you again?”
I glanced at Dunya’s disapproving scowl, turned back to Sasha, and in a quick whisper said, “Meet me here at ten tonight…and bring some of your own poems!”
Softly, he replied, “Only if you will.”
I scurried off, but as I started down the steps I turned and saw Sasha staring after me with sweet eyes and a soft smile. My cheeks suddenly bloomed with a girlish blush, and I practically flew down the stairs, along the deck, and back into our tiny cabin. And my cheeks continued to burn as I dropped on the berth next to my sister, even more so when I noticed Dunya glaring at me.
“You shouldn’t talk to strangers, young lady,” she admonished as she picked up her knitting. “You know very well what men want!”
I couldn’t stop myself from grinning like a complete fool. “No, I don’t. What do they want, Dunya?”
She shook her head in disgust. “And you most certainly shouldn’t let someone kiss your hand!”
Varvara dropped her book. “Did someone kiss your hand, Maria? Oi, tell me! Tell me what he looked like! Was he old and ugly or was he young and…and-”
Almost silently, I mouthed, “Handsome!”
Her eyes grew into disks. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said lightly, slapping her leg. “Nothing at all.”
But as I reached for my satchel, I knew that something had indeed taken place, something different from anything else. I could feel it in the tightness of my stomach, the way I could still sense his lips on my hand, and how I kept trying to hold his image like a photograph in my imagination.
While I knew our Siberian sun would never set on that midsummer night, I feared the hours would never pass. They dragged by, and I busied myself with sorting through a few of my own poems I’d brought with me. Which would Sasha like the most? Which would win his approval? I didn’t have my favorite with me-a poem I’d written just this spring about the blooming of the birches-and when I tried to write it down from memory, it came out all stupid and clumsy. Frustrated, I tore the paper to bits.
My sister fell asleep around nine, just as I had thought, but Dunya kept knitting away, more and more furiously, the sleeve of a sweater growing longer by the minute. I’d counted on her dropping off long ago, lulled by the churning of the boat and the soft waters we sailed, yet she didn’t. I kept staring at our traveling clock, and when it reached ten-fifteen, I could bear it no more.
“I’m going to the toilet. I’ll be right back.”
Dunya scowled at me and hesitated before nodding. Clutching a folded piece of paper with several of my poems scrawled on it, I charged out. Reaching the end of the narrow corridor, I glanced briefly over my shoulder to make sure our housekeeper wasn’t watching, then burst out a side door and onto the narrow deck. In seconds I was clambering up the steep stairs to the top deck, my breath coming short and quick.
Yet when I emerged above and quickly scanned the broad deck, it was just as I had feared-there was no sign of Sasha. Either he’d broken his promise and not come at all, or he’d been here at ten, waited a few minutes, and given up. Oh, no, I thought, squinting in the sharp bright evening light. I spun around, my dark dress flying wide. There was nothing, no one, only this riverboat and the huge blue sky overhead. My eyes began to well up…what had I expected? What sort of fool was I?